


Dreaming of Tizca

by Wecanhaveallthree



Category: Warhammer 40.000
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:41:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25842979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wecanhaveallthree/pseuds/Wecanhaveallthree
Summary: I remember how you sold me.
Kudos: 21





	Dreaming of Tizca

Thamud’s first conscious thought was that he had been asleep for a very, very long time.

That couldn’t have been true, of course, for even as that idea came to be, he realised that he was walking. Not in any hurry. There was no urgency to his steps. This was no war-march. It was a simple forward motion, one ceramite boot in front of the other, bereft of meaning or purpose. A mechanical action. He was walking because the alternative would be standing still, and the Adeptus Astartes, as a rule, did not stand still.

Thick tangles of emerald foliage bent, protesting, beneath his tread. Hardy undergrowth. Not merely natural and wild, but resistant - the kind of pernicious flora that had once known the touch of civilisation. The kind that rebelled, that would not be so easily tamed again.

He’d seen it before, somewhere, hadn’t he? Creepers and vines strangling the broken shells of abandoned buildings. A green desolation.

Prospero.

Home.

But how could that be? The last Thamud had seen of Prospero had been as it burned in betrayal. He recalled the punishment sent by the Emperor upon a wayward son. He had supported the Spireguard in a holding action, hoping to evacuate as many innocents from the City of Light as possible. There had been a desperate flight to another world. And then…

Beyond that, the memories were steeped in an impenetrable haze. The more he grasped for them, the more ethereal they became, spilling through his fingers like sand. Withering. Waning. A prickle of alarm crept up his spine. Was this the result of some battlefield injury? Had he been rendered insensate in the fighting?

Or, if this was the Desolation, if he was wandering alone-

A mirror. He needed a mirror.

Thamud’s fingers were clumsy in their gauntlets, as sluggish and imprecise as his waking mind. He hooked them under the quick-release seal of his helm and pulled. Nothing. Again. Alarm transformed into inhuman claustrophobia. Trapped. Sealed in.

On the third attempt, bindings caught and released. Sealed air hissed out, tomb-stale, crypt-dead.

At once he felt the warmth upon his face, his bare skin. The heat of a hot, orange, life-giving sun. The aching familiarity of it. He could hear all the sounds of nature, his enhanced senses open to all the chirps and mutters of tiny jungle life. For a moment he was caught, enraptured, his footsteps halted, helm clutched to his chest, eyes lifted to the dusky hues of the sky.

Reality and need reasserted themselves. Thamud turned the helm about, raising it opposite his face, looking for a reflection. The metal refused one. Flecked with gold, it was a weeping azure rather than the stern bronze he expected. He could not find himself in the warped ceramite.

Battle damage, then. The only reasonable explanation.

Mag-locking the dented helm to his belt, Thamud crouched with an aching protest from his power armour, as if it too had just awoken from an ancient slumber. He dug a hand into the earth, overturned it. Black soil. He pricked his ears - against the backdrop of hums, he could hear the faint crawl of water over rock. A stream. Water. Something to see himself within.

There was no weapon at his side, not even the questionable protection of a combat knife, much less the reassuring weight of bolter. But there was no choice. He rose on creaking servos and walked towards the low gurgle.

The jungle’s proportions were majestic. Titanic. Thamud weaved between grand tree-boles that could have been mistaken for the stone pillars of Iram, carved with the knowledge of Prospero’s first settlers. Those districts had remained on the outskirts of Tizca, having no place in the ordered realm of Magnus, their engraved wisdom duly recorded within the numberless pyramid-archives. Before the calling - before the transformation - Thamud had made his own rude markings on the lesser pillars native to his village. The Legion had taken him from Iram, but something of the boy would always remain there.

Low-hanging branches gave way before him, their powerful limbs snapping back behind as if to deny all trace of passage. Golden sap trickled from where he stumbled over buried stones or against sturdy trunks. Small, many-winged creatures descended at once upon these wounds, licking and burrowing. He hurried on.

It felt like an age before he emerged into a small clearing, before his greaves sunk minutely into wet loam. Where the stream lay, innocent and untouched, crawling under rocks and roots.

At once Thamud was splashing into it, disturbing the tranquil flow. He was down on his knees, lowering his face to the water’s surface, praying for the ripples to shudder into submission. Fearing that they would reveal a headless suit of animate armour, somehow, as though he had undergone a fiercer, deeper transformation than his first. The words kept flitting through his mind: only in death does duty end. Only in death.

The water’s surface cleared, and Thamud found himself staring back. His gaze was bright and focused.

There was the rugged stubble, the scar that quirked the corner of his mouth, the untamed mane of thick red hair held back by a thick black band. There was none of the tell-tale inflammation about his eyes that would indicate infection by dreaded Psychneuein. He blinked once, twice, and an incongruous flue of fine crimson dust fell from his eyelashes. It spilt into the water, darkening for a moment, then was gone. Washed away.

Gingerly, Thamud dipped his gauntlets into the stream, pooling water to splash on his forehead and cheeks. Cool and sharp. His head cleared, as though the cleansing had been mental as well as physical, the accumulated silt of time.

‘Brother.’

A whisper. A spark of blue beneath the green. A sapphire buried by moss, but yet, so very determined to shine. Thamud could see it, just, now his attention was called. How had he not noticed before? The voice was insistent, cracked, parched. As though it had been calling for him for some time.

The shape of an Astartes, half-sunk in the stream, limbs entangled by the greenery. A regal helm bracketed by six ebony horns. Trapped by the weight of its unpowered armour. Helpless.

Thamud looked down at his hands.

To his surprise, he found he had a knife after all.


End file.
